Thursday, August 15, 2013: 8:00 AM
Nautilus 1-2 (Sheraton San Diego)
Myriant Corporation has constructed a plant in Louisiana to commercially produce succinic acid by fermentation from renewable carbon sources. The Myriant process is built upon a series of Escherichia coli strains initially developed at the University of Florida (Jantama, et al., 2008. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 101:881-893). Both genetic engineering and metabolic evolution was used to develop the strains. Myriant has performed further work on the strains and fermentation methods to improve and better understand the process.
Genome sequencing revealed that many point and frameshift mutations, and two significant deletions, occurred spontaneously in the chromosome during evolution. Knowledge of these mutations has given deep insight into how the strains perform so well.
Further genetic engineering and metabolic evolution is being applied to further improve the strains and to expand the range of carbon sources that can be efficiently metabolized by the strains.
Acknowledgment: Material based in part on work supported by Department of Energy Award DE-EE0002878/001. Disclaimer language prescribed in the award is incorporated herein in its entirety.